finding ethnic food served with love

Tag Archives: burnt popcorn

Dave’s View: I know you’ve had those days. THOSE DAYS THAT EVERYTHING GOES RIGHT! You wake up. You feel good. But wait, it’s only going to get better. Why, you may ask? Because you just walked into the new Pakistani restaurant called Chapati. It’s located off Lafayette Road and I-65 in Indianapolis. It’s in the same strip mall as Los Chilaquiles Restaurant. You’ll feel the love spewing right when you walk into the place. It’s an open concept type of place with normal hipster tables followed by a semi second level (one to two feet off the ground), which host huge wooden square tables that you could dance or sleep on(don’t recommend, and please don’t do it.) Andrea and I decided to dine at the huge wooden tables and watch it, the seats are wood benches with patio cushions on them. Not much padding, but comfortable and odd. A good kind of odd. You don’t want to “fly” into them, like I did. Your butt will get an ache, but that will subside when you order your food.

Yes, you do have to order your food at the counter, but in this case, this is a fantastic idea. Because our guide/server/one wonderfully nice person, will explain all of the menu and won’t rush you. He was fanatical about the food. His spewing of love was almost sickening. How can a man love his food so much? I know, by tasting it! He knows how good the food is and he’s staring at you like, “Take your time, just pick anything. You’re going into another food dimension.”

Beef Bahari

Beef Bahari is what I ordered. Thinly sliced beef, rolled, marinated twice(our guide/server/one wonderfully nice person told me this) served on a bed of hot Basmati rice with a side of Chapati bread. I will start off with the sides. The Basmati rice is multi colored and spicy. Basmati is a longer rice and feels better in the mouth than the normal white rice you get everywhere else. The Chapati bread is one of a kind. It tastes like burnt popcorn. When I say burnt popcorn, I’m being nice in this situation. I love burnt popcorn. Burnt popcorn probably has enough carcinogens to kill you, but I don’t care. I still like the taste. I could live off Chapati bread and water for months, maybe years. I wouldn’t get tired of it. I love this bread. Can you tell that?

Now to the beef in the Beef Bahari. Your first bite, oh I’m sorry, you don’t have to bite, it will melt in your mouth. You can put the rolled beef on your tongue and it will dissipate slowly, melting, a one of a kind taste. Spectacular in all forms! This is the best I can describe it. You have to try it to believe it. When I ordered the dish, our guide/server/one wonderfully nice person told me it was the hardest dish to prepare there because of the double marination. Well, the hard work pays off and so will the dividends in the future.

This is one restaurant everyone should try. This restaurant deserves to be in the top ten of the best restaurants in 2015! Please go there now!

You’re missing life.

Service: 10 Food: 10 Ambiance: 9.5 Total: 29.5 out of 30

The table

The inside

The inside

The lighting

Beet Goat and Chicken Biryani

Chapati bread

Table game

The outside

$15-$25 dollars without adult beverages. They do not serve adult beverages.

Andrea’s View: I once wrote on Facebook that after watching too many PBS and Travel Channel programs, that I am pretty sure we can achieve world peace through falafel sandwiches. Well, Chapati’s on Lafayette Road doesn’t have falafel, but they do have the next best thing. Slow aged, slow cooked, exotically spiced meats with spicy basmati rice and warm bread. I can already hear people putting down their machine guns and picking up olive branches.

But before I get into the world peace thing, Chapati is a brand new restaurant north of I-65 on Lafayette Road, specializing in Pakistani, Indian, and Mediterranean flavors and cooking methods. Dave and I wandered into Chapati one week day afternoon for lunch. We found a bright, clean, a happy little place managed by a delightful young man who explained the entire menu to us. Not just read the menu to us, but excitedly and passionately described each item as to which spices were in each one and how they cooked each dish. Dave and I made our selections, he changed my order and praised Dave on his selection. I originally ordered the beet goat (yes beet and goat stewed together) with rice and bread. The manager told me I should order a combo with the beet goat and chicken biryani. He stated that the biryani rice would be more flavorful because it was cooked with chicken. Okay, it’s your restaurant. Dave and I paid (you order at the counter) and took our drinks and sat down to await our fabulous food. And fabulous it was. My beets and goat had hung out together so long that I couldn’t tell by looking what was beet and what was goat. And I mean that in a good way. My rice was tricolored with saffron, paprika and probably garam marsala spices. And the chicken. The chicken was the best part. It was a leg and thigh piece that was so tender that I could pick the meat of the bone with a plastic fork. And I picked that bone clean.

Now let me get back to this world peace thing. As exotic as all this food looked and initially tasted, it isn’t that unfamiliar. Chefs and foodies alike have been singing the praises of beet and goat cheese for years now. Why not beets and goat meat? And chicken and rice. What Midwestern kid wasn’t given chicken and rice at least once a week for dinner? I propose that Chapati caters the next UN Summit and if we all sit down at a table together with really good food, we may realize that we have much more in common that we know at first glance.